Social networking syndication dilutes your messages!

Okay before I start ranting I'll admit it. I'm usually late to the party when it comes to "The next big thing". So some of the below rant could be blamed on me being "behind the times".

• It took me ages to be converted to Facebook.
• I completely missed MySpace.
• I have no idea what the cool kids are using instead now.

But I was there pretty early on for Twitter. I loved it then and I still love it today. Before Stephen Fry & Chris Moyles were getting it publicised in the mass-media me and a few friends were remarking on trivial junk like what we were doing, drinking, eating, and what we were listening to whilst we did it. It was fun to have a little app that let us frivolously comment like that.

But damn it Internet! You keep getting your Twitter in my everything else!

Since the Social networking explosion everyone has been signing up for the cool site of the moment, resulting in people having too many different sites to update. So along came the creation of social syndication sites like Ping.fm. These sites do a fantastic job of giving you the ability to write once and post to many. However in order for this to work all your entries have to work on every network, i.e. the simplest. So every network ends up full of frivolous twitter-style messages. As an added bonus I get to read the same damn message 4 or 5 times in different places.

Some networks have advantages over others and people syndicating their messages are missing out on this. Stop for a moment and think!

• Why do you need to get the exact same message to all these networks?
  
• Why do you even HAVE all these networks?

Look at the strengths of each network and use it appropriately! Bite the bullet and drop those that have no advantages over the others!

Facebook

Great for more intimate personal messages. Change your profile to private, drop all those "friends" you have no idea who they are or haven't seen in about 10 years, and now you can message about things a little more personal than: "Ate 6 slices of toast today LOL".

Twitter

Perfect if you have people interested in what you're doing but wouldn't want them turning up at your house. Link to your latest project your working on for people up to see, send a general query out to the Internet masses and see what answers you get back, or do just tell us what colour pants your wearing (a little of this is good). :)

Blog

Sometimes we do want to know a bit more about your opinions. Tell us your views in a bit more detail rather than just spewing out a convenient ambiguous one-liner.

In closing

Come on people! There is a place for Twitter but let's not let it dilute everything we do or say into a 140 character soundbite!

Incidently, follow me on twitter if you want to know things about me like what I ate for tea. ;)